Sorry about the jargon; I was just trying to convey the essentials as quickly as possible. Time to bust out the MSPAINT skills, I guess!
Are you clear on re-attaching the both front/center lines? They go like this:
- Gaastra Bar Front Lines.jpg (12.25 KiB) Viewed 4101 times
The triangular lock ring is held against the round steel ring by the velcro retainer (as indicated by the little black arrow). When attached to a foil and with the leash attached on that line, pulling the red safety tab near the chicken loop will probably make the kite helicopter in place (not good). The simplest solution is to leash to an outside line:
- Gaastra Bar Outside Leash.jpg (13.76 KiB) Viewed 4101 times
There's a prusik knot on the left leader line which the leash is attached to:
A prusik won't work at all on the flying lines. A larks head around a steel ring might be less prone to slippage than a prusik knot:
If you were to use a steel ring on the flying lines, you'd need to protect it with sleeving. You should find a steel ring and sleeving attached several metres up the left centre flying line. In the standard configuration, it's there to prevent the bar from riding all the way up the line when the safety is pulled. You can borrow this ring for your outside line leash attachment, but the sleeving might be difficult/impossible to remove from the centre line to place on the outside line; which is why I suggested Dacron tape around the line might work as makeshift sleeving.
You can't spin the bar in this configuration because the leash gets wrapped around the chicken loop. If you want to be able to spin the bar, the safety line must pass through the bar:
- Gaastra Bar Single Pass-Through.jpg (12.81 KiB) Viewed 4101 times
But if you're going to go to all that trouble, you might as well do it right, and flag to both steering lines:
- Gaastra Bar Mini-5th.jpg (13.43 KiB) Viewed 4101 times
I hope that clears things up for you.
Despite snobdr's misgivings, I've heard the Adam works alright on a regular bar; I guess they like to be flown off the brakes. So long as you don't try to muscle the kite and yank on the bar, it should be fine. The bar mod snobdr is talking about would be to make something like an Ozone Turbo Bar. You can see one in the linked video from my initial post. It's a bar with a fancy pulley system to allow fixed bridle kites to be flown on a bar without the bad behaviour of the standard bar exhibited in the video. It's almost assuredly not worth the effort given that we have it on fairly good authority that the Adam flies well enough on a standard bar. When you go to the beach, bring some 3mm cord (with a core and a braided outer--
something like this) to make pig tails, you might need it to add some length to the front or back lines greater than what's available in the trim strap.
You won't be able to stack the Adams. Stacks only work for kites with outside attachment points like Flexifoil Stackers, C-Kites, ARCs, and some hybrids (people have done it with the Best TS, I think). The bridles of the Adam are roughly centered in each half of the kite. Back in the day there were foils which had attachment points on the top side for stacking; I can't remember the brand or model though.
Regardless, once you get either of these kites in the air on a brisk day, you won't be thinking about stacking anyway. A fixed-bridle foil develops almost twice as much power as an inflatable for the same area of cloth; making your 4.5m pull about as hard as a 7 or 8m inflatable in the same amount of wind. Be careful!
P.S. See if you can find yourself a newer leash with clips on both ends (the end with the safety release goes closest to you). The Gaastra leash is crap, and is only really meant to work with the antiquated safety system. If you must use it, string some line through the webbing loop (the end furthest from the chrome Wichard release shackle) and tie it off to wherever you need to attach. Way more fussy than simply clipping in, no?
P.P.S We're also presuming you already have a harness. You need one to fly with a 4-line bar. Even if you were to get a new bar, you'd have to do something similar to what we're talking about here to make it flag the kite off one or both of the rear lines. Of course, if you're keen to get flying right away, you can skip all this mucking about and use a pair of handles--no harness required.
